There’s a relationship between the writer and the reader. Some have glanced at this column once and decided they don’t want to read anything more about the crazy quilt family in the bedlam bungalow in the outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior.

And there are those of you who read week after week, silent witnesses to this pilgrimage we call family. We tell you the story and the telling changes you and it changes us.

Example: I don’t curse and I don’t get drunk because I want to be a better dad. Even if doing that breaks my heart.

Somewhere along the line, I made this unspoken commitment to tell you the truths of our family, warts and all. Otherwise, how could I look you in the eye?

We’ve never lived with normal, so we don’t know what it looked like. But one of the ways we are family is we sit down to supper, hold hands, say grace and toast the best boys in the world.

And one night Zane’s chair was empty.

It’s not his fault. He was born with challenges, and he walked the path for as long as he could. But one day my beautiful boy wandered, and I like to think that this was because he, of all boys, loved the adventure of it all, loved to jump in the air, and fly toward the second star to the right, straight on till morning.

We loved Zane with all our heart, but some days we could not like the things he was doing. His chair was empty at school, in church, in the Alamo movie house.

Somewhere along the way, he got lost. He never made bad choices, because he didn’t really have the capacity to choose. And Brian and I did everything we could to keep him safe and warm in this nursery on the edge of the fog.

There was a crisis, and wiser people than the Fisher-Paulsons told us that the blue bungalow in the outer, outer, outer Excelsior was no longer safe.

The hardest thing for a parent to say is “I am not enough.” I never wanted to be a grown-up, to say these things. But Brian could. He said, “We love you, but you need to go to this boarding school. And it’s far away.” And even though I couldn’t breathe, I kept smiling because it’s not how I feel or how Brian feels. It’s about giving Zane a chance. So I said, “You will be our son forever, and you will always come back to me. And I will never be whole again until you are with me.”

Zane nodded, because in his innocence there is an ancient wisdom.

You know our story. We have lost friends, and we have lost children. And this time we needed to send our son away in order to save him. We will not see his 15th birthday, and he will not hold my hand at Thanksgiving dinner. He will not hold Buddyboy when fireworks go off, and he will not swear Aidan to secrecy when he has figured out my password. He will not hang his Bart Simpson ornament on our Christmas tree.

We will visit him all we can, spending every dollar that we earn writing this column. And for this long coming year, the outer, outer, outer Excelsior will cross the desert and climb the mountain.

There’s a part of Peter Pan where Captain Hook poisons Peter’s medicine. Tinker Bell, the fairy, drinks the red draught, sacrifices herself to save the lost boy. As she lies dying, Peter breaks the fourth wall, reaches out to the audience and says, “She thinks she could get well again if children believed in fairies. Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe!”

I keep hoping that a miracle will change this, that I will sit at the table and Zane will hold my hand and laugh and toast the best boys in the world. But miracles work only when you work for them. You’ve got to make your own pixie dust.

So this is the day I ask you the readers not to give up on us. We are not three quarters of a family. We are a family working at getting better, separated by a thousand miles but still together in our hearts.

Walk with us in this journey. Believe that Zane will find the help he needs. Believe that Aidan, Brian, Buddyboy and Bandit will do our work, too. Believe that we will come back together.

Don’t give up on us. Before you put down The Chronicle this morning, say quick that you believe, “I do believe in Fisher-Paulsons.”

Kevin Fisher-Paulson is the author of the book “A Song for Lost Angels,” who contributes irregularly to the website Gays With Kids and KQED radio’s “Perspective” series.

Fisher-Paulson lives with his husband, Brian, their two sons and their three rescue dogs in the mysterious outer Excelsior. When not writing, he serves as captain of the honor guard for the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department.